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Please read what I have to say before replying.
Let me clarify.
Example:
![[image loading]](http://file.steamdc.com/img/starcraft/dragoon_path.gif)
Dragoon pathing AI. Go figure.
The Dragoon is famous for being the dumbest unit ever created. It trips up on mines, it cannot move down ramps without circling the main, and it cannot fire without standing still for a small interval.
Bisu's Dragoons
What do you see in those dragoons?
You see Bisu's hand. You see his skill as a player. It is readily and easily apparent. Those Dragoons are no longer simple Dragoons. They are Bisu's Dragoons.
Bisu's Multitasking
The game moves inefficiently and slowly enough to allow extremely fast players to do many things at once.
The same can be said about Bisu's Zealots, Jaedong's Zerglings, his Mutalisks, and even Flash's macro has a personality of its own.
And the source of this all is AI inefficiency.
It's the slight inefficiencies that occur when units are moved around, when they mine, when they attack, and even when they acquire targets. It's these gaps in AI that progamers' hands fill with their skillful touch.
The fact that the AI has so many shortcomings means that truly skillful players can extend their control into the smallest details of unit control and production.
And it's in these things that we can watch progamers shine.
Starcraft 2 AI is nearly cutting edge. But for all of its optimizations, there are very few ways through which players can noticeably demonstrate precision of control.
Fake Boxer's marines are probably the closest to this sort of thing.
![[image loading]](http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft2/images/news/SonyEricssonSTARCRAFTIIOpenSeason2_003368063.jpg)
See those pools of blood? Those were once zerglings.
However, it can only go so far. The gap has been closed a great deal. Armies move very similarly to one another, and there are very few instances when we can truly marvel at progamers' micro and macro because most of it is already done for them and certain subtleties are easily missed because the game moves so quickly.
Aside from actual numerical balance, I believe that Starcraft 2 desperately needs to allow players to truly reveal their skill and precision.
The best way to do this is to introduce AI inefficiencies that will not break the game, but will simply allow for more room for progamers to perform awe-inspiring plays.
GSL 2 convinced me of two things:
- Starcraft 2 has great potential to develop awe-inspiring play at very high levels.
- The engine needs to be tweaked to encourage more of this kind of awe-inspiring play.
In Short:
What needs to change in SC2:
- Less efficient unit pathing
- Less efficient mining
- Slightly slower gamespeed
Clarifications:
- Units shouldn't push each other out of the way.
- Unit pathing should not take into account obstacles in the way until a certain distance threshold.
- Units should experience some friction or jitter (like when caught in forcefields) when moving around obstacles.
- Mining units should be less efficient about switching to unoccupied mineral patches.
- Either gamespeed or overall unit speed should be slowed.
I also believe that "critical units" (glass cannon units) should be designed to be difficult to control and either have large burst damage or very significant spell effects. However, this is another issue.
To reiterate: All I want is for the progamers' precision to be more noticeable and have more far-reaching effects. My suggestions are simply suggestions for meeting this ideal. This goal is what I wish for the Starcraft 2 developers to try and meet, regardless of how they achieve it.
EDIT: Lol I was so cute back then.
  
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I´m okay with it as it is.
I think there´s personality, it just doesn´t reveal itself as bugs and crappy pathing.
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wow. there are still people doing these kinds of threads?
User was temp banned for this post.
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On November 13 2010 21:47 HwangjaeTerran wrote:
I´m okay with it as it is.
I think there´s personality, it just doesn´t reveal itself as bugs and crappy pathing.
That's the thing. Brood War progamer units didn't have crappy pathing. That's where the evidence of their skill comes from.
On November 13 2010 21:50 green.at wrote:
wow. there are still people doing these kinds of threads?
That's why I blogged it...
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and there will always be more. sc1 was partly balanced through ai bugs. What do you think how OP reavers would be without the pathfinding bugs of scarabs? So there will always be folks thinking of the good old times when "real" skill was shown and this translates back to sc2 having to few bugs and being to easy. It won't stop. ever.
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kiwikaki stalkers, foxer marines, qxc drops are just a couple examples. the game is 3 (?) months old. 2 expansions to come. BIG PICtURE YO.
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On November 13 2010 21:58 FortuneSyn wrote:
kiwikaki stalkers, foxer marines, qxc drops are just a couple examples. the game is 3 (?) months old. 2 expansions to come. BIG PICtURE YO.
I am counting on those 2 expansions to knock my socks off. I was referring to the big picture the whole time.
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I think the title is very vague and subjective. I do think SC2 AI is way wrong for giving good gameplay and that's no surprise as the people who made it had no idea about competitive RTS whatsoever. When they started to make this game they couldn't play SC2 themselves yet and SC BW they wouldn't touch with a stick.
Units clumping up/having too small collision boxes, units pushing each other out of the way are both two major things. Automation is one thing. But these just are wrong no matter how you look at it.
But I do think that it doesn't really matter as long as SC2 doesn't have LAN latency. Tweaking the AI to optimize micro potential is something that only makes sense if you can micro in the first place. The input delay prevents that so much so that it doesn't even matter.
SC BW wasn't good because of bad pathing. And SC2 still has bad pathing. Units shouldn't be retarded. They should just be simple minded.
Problem with SC2 is that units have a mind of their own. They try to attack into the enemy even when they themselves are never attacked without receiving any orders.
For micro to be part of the game, unit AI needs to be extremely simple and straightforward so it is easy improve a little upon even by low level players.
As for worker AI, that is a problem especially with the max of 2 bases we often see in many matchups and the was worker saturation works. But this is a minor issue imo as long as mules are part of the game. Terran not having to have workers is just really bad for the game. It's a fundamentally flawed mechanic. Not to mention bad terrans having energy for 10 mules and dropping them all on a gold mineral when the game is really close and scrappy and bases are mined out/workers are all dead.
In the end SC2 doesn't appeal to me much as it is basically playing rock-paper-scissors with someone I would play circles around if real RTS skills actually were a major part of the game. They aren't, no matter what the level of play is. Yeah, highest level right now starts to look right. But still mindgames and build orders dominate, as one could see in the GSL that just finished.
Anyway, I don't see much hope for change. If you dislike the game now, you won't like it anymore when expansions come out. Blizzard did it their own way and ignored the Starcraft community as it was then. Back when it was still an issue all the major players/commentators spoke out against Blizzard. But Blizzard did their own thing and it is now the new standard just because SC2 is the only game in town as SC BW is so old. RTS games will never be like SC BW again. They will always be like SC2 or even more casual/wrong. And half the people on this site have low RTS understanding because they only play SC2 so you won't even convince even people at TL.
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Why do we need less efficient mining? Thats perhaps the best part of Starcraft 2, the games start off at a much faster pace. Making the resource section easier allows for players to really branch out in style when it comes to battles/micro.
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Personally I think ti's just how the game looks and is designed.
I don't think a lot of people doubt that gameplay is really nice, because why would everyone have switched over?
Unit movement in the game (in terms of micro) has been replaced by unit abilities that now represent Micro.
I mean, everyone can now just move stalkers back and fire. It's so easy with such a more effective AI. But not everyone can have interesting blinks like some of the higher level Protoss players.
Actual movement without special abilities has been streamlined for easier use. It seems to me that the use of special abilities like Blink are going to be the more accurate measures of micro in SC2, rather than what went on in BW.
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No, no, no. Game speed is fine. That is a very old argument that has been beaten to death. And no, we shouldn't make the AI shitty just so people can flex their e-peen. SC2 is doing great currently. There are plenty of things constantly being discovered. We don't need to hamper the progress of games in terms of AI/technological development in order to have a good e-sport.
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blizzard's business model does not allow for broken games. you're too used to bw. however i do agree that the game should be slowed down.
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I feel that SC2 don't flow as well as BW.
I'm probably biased but I think Blizzard changed a lot of things just for the sake of changing them. Why did they took away mines and under power siege tanks? I understand that a lot of things are changed due to changes in other race's game play but mech vs protoss is one of the best things in BW.
Where did vultures go? It was in single player but missing in multi player. Why? Instead we get this go - cart looking bike, WTF are you kidding me?
A lot of legendary matches are based on the simple battles of mechanical terran versus protoss macro armies.
And why did they take such a good unit such as dragoon and rename it stalker and make the unit icon fugly like a big ass bug? I have no idea.
I don't enjoy this part of SCII, matchups lacks personality because some classic battles have gone and being replaced with new battles, for any old brood war players this is unsatisfying.
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Yeah, lets make the game worse, to make it more fun. Why not add a mechanism where you need to continuously assemble your units, it will make it harder to build units! Why not require you to replenish their ammo while you'r at it, since your logic is: More stuff to do = more skill = better game.
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I don't know how good of a point this is, but the AI is buggy enough to allow ranged units to sit there and do nothing if your concave wasn't big enough. For example, if you have immortals behind stalkers, they'll just keep walking into the stalkers (with their lower range) and not doing anything. That definitely allows at least *some* potential for "personality".
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You have good intentions and what you are saying is sort of true. I have said many times that the AI problems in BW mean that if you are good at the game you can pull some sick stuff off.
It's nice to be able to see units move in a particular fashion and know exactly what the player had to do to do it. For example if you see a group of goons move up or down a ramp extremely efficiently you know there was more than just a move-click involved. There are many examples of this.
One of the things I like most about SCBW is the longer you play and the better you get the more tiny little tricks and shortcuts you learn. That said I don't think this is the way to improve SC2.
My personal opinion is just to stick with SCBW  and up to date 3D re-release of SCBW would of course be the greatest thing ever achieved by mankind.
But for SC2 I think real skill will present itself in unusual strategies/timing pushes and of course unrealistically good micro. You said yourself gamers no longer have to deal with these AI problems.. so they should have even more time to micro.
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I wouldn't say that SC2 lacks personality, it just has a different personality than SC1.
Surely SC1 was very focused on the player's ability to press buttons faster and more efficiently; to never miss a production cycle or forget one control group of units when a battle started. People had to be mechanically sound and on top of that use advanced strategies.
Due to the simplified mechanics of SC2 I just think that the strategy and mind games part will be more intense in SC2. And that's were the players can bring in their personality to the fullest. In my mind, good unit micro doesn't portray your personality as much as being e.g. "a harassment-oriented super-aggro player".
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We already have Brood War, there's no reason to make Starcraft 2 into Brood War. You don't need to make the AI worse to make a game have personality. I feel that the game has plenty of personality. Watching Kiwikaki hold off a superior army with only a few units is a thing of beauty. And when units act smarter, it allows focus to go into doing other things in the game.
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Belgium6771 Posts
Agreed. This is why I don't enjoy watching SC2 as much as SC1.
But it's still a nice game nonetheless.
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On November 14 2010 01:22 zemiron wrote:
We already have Brood War, there's no reason to make Starcraft 2 into Brood War. You don't need to make the AI worse to make a game have personality. I feel that the game has plenty of personality. Watching Kiwikaki hold off a superior army with only a few units is a thing of beauty. And when units act smarter, it allows focus to go into doing other things in the game.
The point of the thread isn't saying "OMG MAKE SC2 BROODWAR"
It's more of a "OMG MAKE SC2 AS GOOD/FUN TO WATCH AS BROODWAR"
Why sc2-newcomers don't ever understand this, i'm not sure.
Agree with OP though :[.
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EPT
